20 Things You Never Knew About 'Basic Instinct'

Basic Instinct was the movie of 1992 (with apologies to Wayne’s World) and it was full of crazy sex and nudity. That never happened in popular movies of the time. I was 12-years-old in ’92 and in the prime of my “this looks like it has boobs, let’s rent it!” phase with my wastrel friends. We would watch anything—shitty horror, exploitation, even (gasp) melodrama—if it meant the possible glimpse of a naked female body.

Basic Instinct was a sure thing. Starring the hottest woman alive at the time, Sharon Stone, the movie was a shocker. Not only was Stone nude for half the movie, she took part in crazy sex scenes usually reserved for the “adults only” section of my local Hollywood Video. I had to see it. And then see it again.

Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me watch, but I got to see it at a friend’s house during a sleepover. That’s how important it was. We centered a whole night around it. And let me tell you: Basic Instinct did not disappoint.

Thanks to horny young pre-teens like me (and everyone else) flocking to see it, Basic Instinct raked in huge money at the box office. Grossing over $350 million worldwide, it also garnered two Academy Award nominations! Bet you didn’t know that. Here’s some more stuff about Basic Instinct you never knew:

1. Sharon Stone was only offered the role of Catherine Tramell after 13 actresses had turned it down. Director Paul Verhoeven suggested her for the part after the two worked together on Total Recall, But star Michael Douglas wanted a bigger name. He wanted Julia Roberts and others, but no famous actress would play the role. Eventually Verhoeven won out and Stone was cast.

5. The first major sex scene between Curran and Tramell took five days to film. Verhoeven shot hours of footage thinking the MPAA would make him edit the scene to get a R-rating, which they did.

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6. The sex scenes were so choreographed Stone referred to herself and Douglas as “the horizontal Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the ’90s.”

7. The famous leg-crossing scene was included in the movie without Stone’s approval, according to the actress on Inside the Actors Studio. She claims when she saw it, she slapped Verhoeven across the face. Verhoeven claims Stone was told about the shot, and it was her agent who changed her mind afterwards.

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8. Verhoeven was on record when he first signed to do the film as saying that he wanted to make Basic Instinct the first Hollywood mainstream film with an erect penis in it. He didn’t get his wish, but he did get a penis on screen—on Boz’s cadaver when the police examine his body.

9. Writer Joe Eszterhas penned the script in ten days while listening to The Rolling Stones non-stop. The movie was initially called Love Hurts, but he then sold it three days later at auction as Basic Instinct.

10. The script sold for a then-unheard-of sum of $3 million.

11. Eszterhas has admitted his story has a major plot hole: DNA evidence. Police had used DNA evidence since the mid-’80s, but there’s no mention of it in the movie.

12. Eszterhas originally wrote Nick Curran as a lesbian cop. He imagined Kathleen Turner in the role.

13. Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn’s wild sex scene was filmed during a rehearsal and Verhoeven liked it so much he kept it in the movie. The actors did not know they were being filmed.

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14. Basic Instinct is Tripplehorn’s first feature film.

15. Brooke Shields turned down the role of Roxy because she wasn’t interested in nudity. Been there, done that, I guess.

16. Basic Instinct opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1992.

17. Douglas, who raced cars in his younger years, did most of his own stunt driving in the film.

18. Catherine’s last name comes from Alan Trammell, the longtime star shortstop for the Detroit Tigers. Stone discovered that a “trammell” was also a Scottish death shroud and complimented Eszterhas on his subtlety with the choice, not believing the truth.

19. Thanks to a script leak, gay and lesbian activists protested the filming in San Francisco constantly. SFPD had to deploy 50 riot police to every location during the duration of the shoot.

20. When Nick is tailing Catherine on Highway One, he passes a car with the license plate “OUTTA TM,” a presumably unintentional reference to the “OUTATIME” license plate in Back to the Future.